


Legacy

by thankyouturtle



Category: Batgirl (Comic), Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-04
Updated: 2011-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-16 02:23:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankyouturtle/pseuds/thankyouturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian's first challenge as Batman is one he should have expected - but didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legacy

Damian had been training his whole life to one day become Batman. More than Dick - more than Drake, even - he'd been born for this role. When Dick had announced his trip to the JLI's space station, that he'd be leaving Damian as sole-Batman-in-charge, he'd known that this was finally his chance to prove - not just to Dick, but to the world - that he was the Batman they'd been waiting for. He'd spent weeks checking and double-checking all his contingency plans, searching through the Batcave's master files to make sure he had a basic understanding of everyone possible criminal he may come across. He'd been more ready to be Batman than anyone else ever had, even Father himself.

Except that he _hadn't_ been, because this was one thing that he absolutely had _not_ been expecting. Which was extremely remiss of him, because it came with the job. Used to come with the job.

It hadn't taken him long to track down the perpetrator, of course. He'd found out her name. He'd found out where she lived, the names of her parents, her school. Her academic record. Her story wasn't so different from any of the others' - smart child, uncaring parents. She'd seen Batman in action, no doubt, and thought that she would like to do what he did, so she'd made herself a look-a-like costume and started getting herself into trouble.

Since he hadn't foreseen this situation, he'd done what Father would have done. He'd tracked her back to her house and told her, in no uncertain terms, that the streets were too dangerous for someone as unskilled as her. And Carrie Kelley had looked at him with big blue eyes and said, "So train me." Something about her had unnerved him, then, and he'd faltered. But, Damian reflected, Father's approach had never worked on any of them.

He'd gone with Dick's tactics instead. He'd actually tried to reason with the girl, telling her that even with training there were dangers she could not be protected from. he told her about the criminals who would target her just because of the costume. "But I don't want to be protected. I want to _fight_. With you." After that, the only sensible thing to do had been to tell her if she didn't stop he'd get her parents involved. That had seemed to cool her interest - for a week. Last night she'd been back again, and she'd almost got them both killed with her amateur theatricals.

So now he was going to use his head. He was Batman, and Batman needed to be clear-headed, however irritated he was at the girl's antics. And when Damian had calmed down, he'd remembered this wasn't the first time a teenaged girl had tried to become a vigilante, and he could easily access information on her predecessors. Some he dismissed out of hand, as they'd never been actively discouraged from fighting - there was no point, he thought regretfully, contacting Cassandra in this case. He briefly considered Gage-Radcliffe, but as she was a meta, the circumstances were hardly parallel. No, it was unfortunate, but it seemed the only person he could go to for help - that was, _advice_ \- was Stephanie.

He checked through her files, first. It was all there - her small successes as Spoiler, her disastrous time as Robin, her disappearance (of _course_ Drake had actually been fooled into thinking she was dead!) and reappearance, her taking over the role of Batgirl before finally returning to her original Spoiler guise. He knew the whole thing almost word-for-word, but looking at it this time, with fresh purpose - he felt like there was something wrong with it. It was just that - a feeling - but he'd learned not to ignore those. Still -

It was probably irrelevant for the moment. What was _imperative_ , however, was that he contact Stephanie as soon as possible, to find a way of dealing with Carrie Kelley. He knew exactly where Stpehanie was, so it was only a matter of inputting her current location to the computer and having her patched through on the vidcom.

"Hey, Neo-Batman," came the usual cheerful tones. Stephanie's eyes and balaclava-like mask loomed large on the computer's main monitor. She was panting slightly, and Damian could hear yells and running feet in the background.

"This is a bad time," he said. He meant it as a statement, and moved his hand to disconnect the call, but she laughed.

"It's always a bad time! When Dick asked me to take on training Young Justice I did _not_ think it was a twenty-four-seven job." The picture blurred for a moment and Damian heard a boy's groan. "When did you get rid of the mustache? I was starting to like it."

Damian ignored the question. Milagro had teased him ruthlessly from the moment he'd shown signs of stubble and - and no one _important_ had seemed to think it made him look any more mature. "I need advice." The words tasted bitter in his mouth, but saying them wasn't as difficult as he'd thought it would be.

"Batwoman?"

"Cassandra has no experience in this area."

"Ah." Without warning, Stephanie disappeared from view. "Hey, Arrowette! Take everyone out to the pool, first person to hold their breath for three minutes without drowning wins. Because I have _grown-up_ business, that's why. With _Batman_ , not that it's any of your -" When Stephanie came back into view, she'd slipped her mask off, showing an unusually flushed face. "You were saying?"

"There's an - issue I believe you may have had some experience with. As you know, I am currently in sole charge of Gotham-"

Stephanie was suddenly wearing that knowing grin he hated so much. "This about the new Girl Wonder?"

"She's not the Girl Wonder," Damian snapped back. "She's operating completely without my approval."

"And you told her that?"

"Yes! She seemed to think that that was incidental to her continuing to cause problems!"

"Sounds familiar," Stephanie replied wryly.

"That is why I want your advice," Damian explained patiently. "Father never managed to discourage your attempts to become a vigilante. What should he have done?"

"Tell me what you've said to her." It was a command, rather than a request, but Damian graciously forgave that and gave Stephanie all the relevant information. When he finished, she was looking unusually grave.

"Damian - I hate to say it, but if you've done your best to put the fear of God in her and it hasn't worked then I don't see what else you can do, except - oh, you're so not going to like this."

"You think I should let her become Robin." Damian's voice was flat.

"I don't know about _should_ , but - Bruce tried everything with me. Not just him - _everyone_ told me I should just go home. It didn't work, and so there I was, only half-trained, doing more bad than good. I should have died." She sounded as though she was trying to stay emotionless, speak of it as mere fact, but it wasn't working. Stephanie was never emotionless. "Carrie's luck might run out before mine did."

She fell silent, and for a long time neither of them spoke. Stephanie's eyes were locked on something Damian couldn't see - a memory, probably. He himself was pondering her words. If he was going to be clear-headed - then yes, she made a very good point. And there was precedent. Todd, Drake and Stephanie - they'd all chosen to be Robin before Father had chosen them. "I don't know that I'd even have time to train her up properly," he said at last. Stephanie's face brightened - she knew that that meant he was considering the idea.

"So find someone who does," she suggested. "I know Cass misses having Nell forever tailing after her. She'd probably love having someone else to teach."

"Perhaps." That didn't sound like an ideal solution to Damian - _if_ Carrie was going to be Robin, then having Batwoman taking care of her was too much like breaking tradition. "At any rate, I appreciate the advice."

"I know you'll make the right decision, Damian." The words were surprisingly warm, and Damian got one last glimpse of that annoying grin before the screen went blank. Of course he was going to make the right decision, he thought, feeling got-at. He was Batman. And if he were to take on Carrie - and it was still hypothetical - then the information he had on her would not be enough. She was deadly serious about Robin now, but that did not rule out her being deadly serious about a new idea every few months.

The obvious thing to do was to check her school records, to make sure she didn't have any history that would compromise her role. Her academic record he already knew, but now he looked for any clue about the girl herself. Teacher's comments suggested she was good-humoured and earnest, and had a large circle of friends - although no one particularly close. Nothing to set off any alarm bells there - in fact, just the opposite. It made her sound ideal.

Her parents were next and they were... _less_ ideal. Several days' careful watching told Damian that neither of them seemed to care particularly about being good parents. Mr Kelley was wrapped up in several extra-marital affairs, while Mrs Kelley split her time between shopping, charity galas and her personal trainer. Then again, while they may be neglectful, their neglect did mean that Carrie's time was almost completely her own. That was important, for a Robin.

Finally, her medical history. Medical records were laughably easy to access - perhaps the next time Wayne Enterprises made their annual charitable donation to the health sector they ought to streamline it into hospital IT security. To Damian's practiced eye, Carrie's files were nothing out of the ordinary. She'd had the usual childhood illnesses, sprained wrists and twisted ankles. She'd had all her immunisations - so her parents weren't completely defunct. Her parents who, according to her records, were not actually her _biological_ parents.

That wasn't something that bothered Damian unduly. While Father might obsess about blood lines, Damian knew - he _had_ to know - that the people that birthed you could be completely inconsequential to the choices you made in your life. But Damian _was_ Batman. It wasn't enough to know that her adoptive parents couldn't care less about the whereabouts of their teenaged daughter. Damian knew the history, knew that it had been Todd's search for his birth mother that had been his undoing. It was better that Damian find Carrie's birth certificate now, just in case he decided to take her on, and to keep tabs on whatever useless ingrates had decided to give her away.

Carrie's birth certificate was a shock. Or - not a shock, because Batman did not get shocked. But it was certainly a surprise. Carrie's father's name meant nothing to Damian. But her mother's - it could just be a coincidence, of course. It was a _common_ name. Still-

He went back to Stephanie's file. Father would have compiled as much information as possible on her - as a vigilante working both within and outside of Batman's rules. A pregnancy should certainly have been recorded - Father had always kept tabs on _everyone_ , and long-lost offspring had a nasty habit of turning up unexpectedly. But that feeling Damian had had before, that there was something wrong with the file - it took some digging before he saw what had happened. Someone, probably Proxy, had removed several paragraphs of information Stephanie had obviously not wanted anyone else to know about. That was the problem with genius hackers. They tended to _hack_ things.

It was hardly a problem for him, of course. The information was still all there, if you knew where to look; Stephanie's meltdown after the death of her father, her pregnancy and decision to adopt out her child, her mother's history of drug abuse. Really, he had to wonder why his father saw fit to make her Robin at all, when she was clearly emotionally unstable. It certainly gave creedence to the idea that he'd only done so in order to entice back his _former_ Robin - which was, in Damian's opinion, yet another black mark against Drake. Still-

Stephanie had been Robin, there was no doubt about that. Her tenure was remembered grimly, a warning to girls who thought more of their abilities than they ought. And yet - as Batgirl, Stephanie had been regarded almost as highly as Cassandra. Would Carrie be her mother's child? And if she was - what did that mean? Over-confidence and a lack of skill? Or that with the right training and, perhaps, encouragement, she would be a more than adequate fighter in the continual war against crime?

He tried to think clearly, again. Before he'd found Carrie's birth certificate, he'd been seconds away from deciding to let her be Robin. There was nothing really to suggest that he shouldn't, just because of an accident of genealogy. Obviously there was more to it than simply telling her "yes" - she'd need training, he'd need time to find out whether he could trust her with his identity. He wasn't sure yet if he even liked her, although perhaps when she was no longer simply an object of annoyance it would be easier to know.

There was another issue that needed to be addressed, however. Stephanie. She'd given her daughter away. She'd moved on with her life. She certainly was not a person who had many regrets. And she'd never spoken about having a baby, not that Damian had ever heard. But he still couldn't assume that she would not want Carrie to be part of her life, now. Even his own mother had - well, these situations were often unreasonably complicated. It seemed to Damian that he was left with two choices, and that either one could be the wrong one. He could tell Stephanie that Carrie Kelley was her daughter, or he could not.

Father wouldn't have done. It was Batman's business to know things, but not Batman's business to tell. It was Batman's business to have an ace up his sleeve, to make sure he was one step ahead - not just of criminals, but of everybody. Dick, on the other hand - Dick would tell her. Stephanie had been an ally since Damian was ten years old and angry at the world for not taking him seriously enough. She might even perhaps be someone he could call a friend, something he didn't have many of outside of the Titans. If Dick were in Damian's shoes, he would tell Stephanie. But he'd do it because he'd be absolutely sure it was the right things to do, and Damian couldn't be. Which meant Damian would have to find a third way, somewhere in between telling her and not telling her.

The first thing to do would be to talk to Carrie again, to formalise his decision to allow her to become Robin. And then -

Stephanie had just stepped out of the shower when she answered her vidcom. Her short blonde hair was still dripping, and Damian refused to notice that she was only wearing a towel. "Tim tells me you've decided to take her on! I _knew_ you'd do the right thing." The mention of Drake made Damian scowl, but he was not going to lose his temper. This was too important.

"I told her I'm prepared for her to become Robin, but I'm not prepared to train her." Stephanie's smile froze, and Damian realised he was going about this all the wrong way. "That is - I don't believe I have enough time to give her the adequate basic skills she needs before she can begin to work in Gotham as my partner. But it is, after all, traditional for a Robin to be part of any teenaged team, and with the Teen Titans currently disbanded-"

"You want me to train her?" Stephanie pursed her lips. "Have you checked to make sure she doesn't feel like you're just getting rid of her?"

"No. She said she was glad she'd be meeting the 'other girl Robin'. And - I think it would be good for her. For both of you."

"I hope the 'other girl Robin' isn't too much of a disappointment for her, then. When are you sending her here?"

"I'm not. I'm bringing her - next weekend."

"You're coming too?" Stephanie looked surprised. "It'll be good to see you, Little D."

"Of course it will," Damian told her, and rang off. She knew he hated that name. Still-

Damian smiled.


End file.
